Rain, rain, go away!

Saturday

All night long and all today it rained and rained. Tonight it is still pouring down and the wind is blowing fiercely outside. This morning I drove to the War Memorial and met up with Margaret, Jen, Andy and Ewen for a very wet soggy run. We didn't end up starting the run until after 9.30am by the time everyone arrived. Fortunately the wind had not picked up at that stage but it was raining really hard with no sign of letting up. We ran from the war memorial along Anzac Parade down to the lake, over Commonwealth Ave bridge and on to the Wetlands detouring along the new path instead of the very muddy trails. Past Molonglo we took a shortcut through Duntroon - still very soggy underfoot. There were large puddles everywhere and we had fun splashing each other and ending up absolutely sodden right through to the skin - shoes and socks squelching! We only counted six other runners out there although we know there were lots of other crazy people running earlier.

After the run we all had to completely change at the War Memorial before heading inside the warmth of the cafe for great coffee, cake and conversation. We felt like we had run twice the distance we did. Here's hoping next Sunday is a lot better weather than this for the Canberra Times fun run! It was pretty dreadful weather today!

I am so glad I have hardy running mates because it would have been really tough running on my own today.

Total distance: 14.44km

Time taken: 1hr 39mins

Average pace per km: 6:50 (lots of stopping and clambering through mud and puddles)

Wednesday Run

Today was my first day back at work in a new job. I enjoyed the challenge and the company. I think it will be ok. I just have to get back into routine again. That could be interesting!

Today was not a wildly pleasant day weather-wise but the evening was not cold as I set off from Parliament House at 5.45pm with Ewen, Chris and Andy. We ran down to the lake, along Anzac Parade and on through Commonwealth Park where they are setting up floriade which will open to the public in a couple of weeks. It was good to have enjoyable company and the rain held off so that we could run slightly further than we have lately on Wednesdays.

Total distance: 11km

Time taken: 1:11

Average pace per km: 6:28

Thursday with the speedygeese

After work I quickly changed into my running gear in the very fancy changing area downstairs in our brand new office block before driving to Dickson Oval to join the speedygeese training. I haven't been to Thursday training for ages, the main reason being that the oval keeps being closed due to rain. We really have had a lot of rain over the past few weeks. There were 13 of us including our speedycoach.

After a couple of warm up loops of the oval the main session consisted of inverse pyramids with reverse recoveries. These were:

80secs fast/60 slow; 60fast/40slow; 40fast/20slow; 20fast/40 slow; 40fast/60slow; 60fast/80slow; 80 fast.

Fortunately we just listened for speedygeoff's whistle to know when to change speed!

After a short break we ran 440m fast/440m jog x two.

We finished with another warm down loop of the oval.

I felt like a bloated slug and was by far the slowest tonight. I had far too much soup at lunchtime and that was a big mistake. I'll remember just to have a sandwich next Thursday.

Total distance: 8km on a surprisingly warm evening.